Now, a fisherman, I am not, but it didn’t look too difficult, and after a delay due to the weather being a tad stormy, we set off in Milt’s little boat and proceeded to pull in perch and dogfish. Jim caught a beautiful small pike fish. It’s amazing how far you actually have to go these days, even in America, to get away from it all, but this place had no cell phone reception and the locals communicated with strangers using a series of grunts, nods and the occasional scowl.
I liked it.
Best of all, there were Amish. They never cease to fascinate me and as a result I stopped to take a photo of a young guy in his twenties who was by the side of the road working to control two horses in a harness. He was using them to pull a couple of freshly felled and stripped trees, out of a ditch. He politely requested that I did not take the photo when I asked him if he’d mind, since in his world, the graven image is frowned upon.
Thereafter, myself and this pleasant Amish man, proceeded to have a nice chat about farming and I have to say, he was one of the happiest blokes I’ve ever met. His young son, Piet, was helping out, as he explained how he farmed 200 acres up there. It got me thinking about the recession and all this phony modern life we all buy into in one way or another. These folks live off the land using no electricity, growing their own food and living pretty much as they did when they first came over from Europe in the 1600‘s.
Yes, I was starting to relax and daydream. Later, I stopped at a bar (naturally) and joined some really old geezers and put the world to right, when I could actually understand what they were saying. There was a fire burning in the grate, despite it being late May and I could see how one could easily waste much time up here, doing not much of anything at all OR, as the Amish do, get busy on the farm. Later I saw an old Amish man and young boy fishing on Black Lake. Unlike us, they’d rowed out there, whereas we’d been reliant on our outboard motor, and I believe they were keeping just about everything they caught. No effort is wasted in their culture, a good lesson for us all.
~ A.P.
